Adult Children of Polyamorous Parents

The first blog post in this series explored the five tips that children from the Longitudinal Polyamorous Family Study (LPFS) suggested for younger kids whose parents come out to them as polyamorous. This second post focuses on adult children whose parents come out as polyamorous later in life. The information for the first blog post came from children raised in polyamorous families who participated in the LPFS, and the information for this second blog post also includes the children of some of my family and relationship coaching clients.

Cavalier

Some adult kids hear from their elder parents that they are polyamorous, and the kids are neither surprised nor dismayed because they don’t really care either way. “Sounds about right” is what one client’s 25-year-old son responded to his dad when he mentioned his polyamorous relationships. Adult kids in this category are often quite busy with their own lives and not particularly focused on what their parents are doing. These adults who have little to no reactions to their parent(s) polyamory tend to be non-religious and somewhat socially liberal or libertarian.

Celebratory

Image: People raising glasses in a toast

Source: Pavil Danilyuk/Pexels

Other adult kids are excited and pleased about their parent(s) polyamorous relationships. In some social circles, polyamory is all the rage and for an adult to have polyamorous parents can make them “a rockstar at any dinner party” if the conversation turns to CNM (consensual non-monogamy). Not only does it offer cool cred to have polyparents, but it also contributes to elder parents’ happiness and relationship satisfaction.^₁Adults who want their parents to be happy and healthy with high levels of relationship satisfaction can celebrate their parent(s)’ expanded love.^₂

Concerned

Like other sex and gender minorities (SGM), polyamorous and CNMsters frequently face others’ erroneous assumptions that, because this person varies in some way from sex/sexuality/gender norms, that must mean that they have no boundaries whatsoever. Proponents of the status quo have deployed this tired trope against LGBTQ+ folx, feminists, and targeted BIPOC populations with special virulence.

Research on gender, families, relationships, and diversity has repeatedly demonstrated that these concerns are baseless.^₃ Instead, cumulative findings indicate that sex and gender minorities have boundaries like people of all other sexes, sexual/relational orientations, and genders. In other words, polyamorous elder parents are no more likely to pose a threat than are any other kind of elder parents. The health, ease, and comfort of the family will depend much more so on how the people treat each other and have virtually nothing to do with what kinds of relationships elder adults have with their peers.

Some people — including some adult kids of polyamorous folks — confuse polyamory and other forms of consensual non-monogamy with cheating. They are quite different, in part because participants in CNM can negotiate their relationships, set personal boundaries, and are far less likely to transmit STIs to each other. Folks who are cheating, however, do not generally negotiate that with their partners and instead may lie to hide their outside relationships, and are far more likely to transmit a STI to a partner than are folks who are in CNM relationships.^₄ Cheating hurts in part because of the lying and betrayal, which are (ideally) absent from CNM.

Other adult children of polyamorous parents have complex emotional reactions to their parent(s) relational style. Some of these adult kids will feel especially angry if disagreement over CNM led to a divorce and the other parent feels hurt. In those cases, the adult child might take sides in support of the parent they view as wronged, often because the other parent wanted CNM and the relationship did not survive the transition. In that case, those adult kids often see CNM as a nefarious practice and sometimes even ban that polyamorous parent from seeing their grandchildren.^₂

Finally, some of the adult children in the LPFS reported that they felt some concern that their partners might feel nervous about the adult child of a polyfamily’s ability to maintain a monogamous relationship. One respondent reported that she was quite nervous to introduce her boyfriend to her family and explain the network of relationships among various adults. She avoided it for a year and a half and eventually told him all about her polyfamily, and he was quite relaxed about it — somewhere between cavalier and celebratory. He knew his devoutly religious parents would be quite upset about it, however, so the couple decided not to bring it up with his parents. When the couple married (monogamously) several years later, only the respondent/bride’s biological parents came to the wedding and the in-laws never asked questions about additional partners (why would they?), so their polyamorous partner was not an issue. The elder in-laws lived in different countries, so it was not a problem to keep their interactions infrequent.

In the family referenced above, it worked out fine because the partner was in a different country and unable to attend the wedding anyway, so their absence did not have to be painfully engineered to hide them. In other cases, concealing partners during big life events has negative and painful consequences for many people involved, and families are forced to make hard choices about whose comfort gets prioritized. Sometimes people compromise and introduce the additional partner(s) as beloved friends and chosen family members. Overall, it is not difficult for the polyfamily to pass as monogamous for a period of time, but it can come at the expense of erasing important relationships from major life events.

Polyamory Essential Reads

When Your Parents Are Polyamorous

Why Some Couples Choose Polyamory

Conclusions

Polyamory and other forms of CNM offer adults the potential for more love, affection, attention, emotional support, and meeting a wider range of needs. They can be especially positive for elders, offering higher levels of relationship satisfaction than found among similarly-aged monogamous people. Many adult kids of openly polyamorous parents are happy or neutral about their parent’s relationships, especially if the kids are socially liberal and non-religious. Adult children with polyamorous parent(s) are less likely to celebrate CNM if they are religious, personally conservative, have been cheated on or have cheated on someone themselves, or feel that CNM played some negative role in their parents’ divorce. For those adult children, the perceived benefits that polyamorous folks report for aging with multiple partners are either invisible or inadequate compensation for the damage the kids see as resulting from CNM.